


all the leading ladies of the silver screen

by Fatale (femme)



Category: White Collar
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-04 00:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme/pseuds/Fatale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His mom taught him how to waltz.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the leading ladies of the silver screen

all the leading ladies of the silver screen  
Gen: Peter, Neal, Kate, Mozzie  
WC: 1060

A/N: Happy Friday! Have a story.

 

 

 

Neal's mom taught him how to waltz. Apparently, she’d learned it for her wedding. She had taken six weeks of lessons years ago and she had gotten pretty good at the basics. She learned extra small flourishes, though, from black and white movies that played on loop in the evenings on classic movie channels. She watched slim, fragile women with doe eyes and copied their graceful movements in her khaki pants and t-shirts on her days off.

When she got home from work, usually after eleven in the evening, she'd wake Neal up, usher him into the living room and he'd stand on her feet, cheek pressed against the cold metal of her belt buckle as she counted out the steps. 1-2-3, 1-2-3.

They danced across the brown carpet in the small rental house, shadows splayed across the wall by the blue glow of the television on mute.

"We're getting better," she said. She smelled like a nameless flowery perfume and cigarettes and he loved every moment of it. He closed his eyes, pressed his face into her belly, let his muscle memory take over and counted in his head.

 

***

 

Mozzie taught him about wine. He'd said it was for the job, that getting close to Adler required a level of sophistication that a $15 bottle zinfandel wasn't part of. Neal thought the inexpensive white zinfandel tasted just fine.

He suspected that Moz just wanted someone else to talk to about wine, someone who would listen and actually care.

Kate knew all about wine, just as she knew about all expensive things. She liked beautiful art, rich wine, and delicate food. She loved the opera, too, but only the best seats. A pretender to the throne, Moz called her, though Neal never really could figure out what he meant by that. He was dazzled by her beauty, her worldliness, the way she never could get her hair into a chignon exactly right.

She was a woman out of time. She’d have been a star in the 30’s and an icon in the 50’s, but she was a con artist now, when people demanded the truth of their celebrities, wanted to watch them in their homes and see photos of their kids. She had too many secrets and she refused to be known by anyone.

Neal read a lot, learned wine and art, and molded himself into a modern day Frank Sinatra, a fitting companion for starlets and everyone in between. He learned to chase quantity, not quality, but sometimes when he was alone, he’d slowly sip cheap wine and enjoy it just a little more.

 

***

 

It sounded really stupid, but Peter taught him about love.

Neal had been in love - Kate, his heart still thumped painfully in his chest when he thought about her - he'd made love, declared love (there was a certain princess). But Peter held on to what he loved in a way Neal never could. Peter had Elizabeth, would go to the ends of the earth to find her and keep her safe, and he had Diana, who he worked side-by-side with an easy and wordless symbiosis.

One evening in the middle of a thunderstorm, Satchmo bolted out of the house without his leash, scared by a peal of thunder and lightening. Peter and Elizabeth searched for nearly an hour in the pouring rain until Peter found him cowering under a neighbor’s bushes and brought him home.

Neal stood in their living room, towel ready to dry Satchmo off. "Can't believe you found him," Neal said, surprised by his own crash of relief, the way his nerves felt uneven and jittery.

Elizabeth came in shortly after, eye makeup ruined and hair tangled. "Oh, my baby," she said, throwing herself at Satchmo and burying her face in his damp fur.

Satchmo shook the water out of his hair, sending a spray of water all over everything, including Neal.

"Sorry about the suit," Peter said, not sounding sorry at all. He left his umbrella by the front door, shook his raincoat out.

"It's fine," Neal said and toweled Satchmo off when Elizabeth was done. And it really was.

"My strong men," Elizabeth said and gave Neal a small, chaste peck on the cheek and headed towards her bedroom to change.

"You can stay here tonight," Peter said. "I'm not driving in this storm and I don't want you taking a cab. Change into some of my clothes and we'll lay out your suit so it'll be dry tomorrow."

"Okay."

Peter looked surprised at Neal's easy acquiescence, then speculative. "I found Satchmo, he's okay, Neal."

Neal shook his head. "Yeah, I know, Peter. You always seem to find what you're looking for."

"Found _you_."

"Yeah, yeah, three times," Neal murmured. "I still maintain I wanted to be found each time, basically turned myself in. The FBI hardly did _anything_." Satchmo, nearly dry, bounded off to find his food bowl.

"Uh huh. The manhunt was a minor inconvenience," Peter said, coming up behind Neal. He laid a tentative hand on Neal's shoulder. "I'll find you wherever you are. You can't run from me."

Neal felt his skin jump at the contact, at the unexpected heat. "Want to bet?” Neal asked, but thought, _I know_.

Neal didn't know what it was like to be counted among someone's possessions, what it was like to always be found, to _want_ to be found. Neal ran, it was what he did, and people always let him leave. But Peter wouldn't, couldn't, not when he considered Neal his responsibility, maybe even cared for him.

Secretly, Neal had always thought of himself as a balloon. He could go anywhere so long as nothing tethered him to the earth, but now he had an anklet, friends who depended on him and Peter, who would not let him go, not in a million years.

Neal was surprised at how much comfort it gave him, at the sudden warmth in his belly.

"Popcorn and a movie?" Peter asked. "El always says that thunderstorms make her feel like watching Cary Grant."

"Sounds like a plan." He heard Satchmo's claws click against the floor, Elizabeth opening and closing dresser drawers, the distant rumble of thunder in the air. Neal asked hesitantly, feeling almost shy, "Did I ever tell you how I learned to waltz?"

 

 

 

The end.

 


End file.
